


like a ship that carried me

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28618998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: “Mrs Fitz,” Jemma begins, nervously smiling. It’s been years after all. The last time she spoke to her was on the phone nearly two months ago, and in trying to console her and promise her that they’d explain things soon, there hadn’t been much in the way of friendly conversation. Jemma has no idea if the woman who loved her so dearly back then still feels the same way now.They're both mothers now and understand each other more than ever before. Jemma's reunion with Fitz's mother. A sequel to 'time and children' but you don't have to read that one first.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	like a ship that carried me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phlebotinxm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phlebotinxm/gifts).



> For Sarah, one of the most wonderful beans (and writers) on the planet, who requested a follow-up to 'time and children' from Jemma's point of view. I'm sorry it took me longer than I hoped it would but thank you so much for being so lovely and for this wonderful idea! I hope it's what you had in mind!
> 
> This is a sequel to 'time and children' but you don't necessarily have to read that one first. It's more just a different perspective and you'll be able to get it no problem!
> 
> Title and poem from 'I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone' by Rainer Maria Rilke. 
> 
> Oh, and a quick note, 'high' is sometimes what people here will say instead of 'hyper', just for when you come to it ;)
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

_"li ke my mother's face,_  
_ like a ship that carried me along _  
_ through the deadliest storm." _

-

Her house has a blue door.

It’s strange, the facts Jemma remembers as she drives up the street, looking for a place to park. She hasn’t been here in over ten years – closer to fifteen, actually, if she counts space time – but she remembers clearly the house at the end of the street, the only one that has a blue front door.

It used to be black, in line with the other houses on the street that are black or brown or a dark green that may as well be black. _It used to be black,_ that’s what Fitz had said when they first walked up to it all those years ago, bright-eyed and baby-faced. Maybe he’d seen the question in her face, the one she hasn’t known she was asking. _It was black when he left on the Friday night, and by Saturday morning it was blue._

The first time she had come to Glasgow she had been eighteen and it had been the summer. Fitz had been her friend for just shy of two years, and she had known everything. All of the details had been stored neatly in her brain, filed away for occasions where they may become of use. On the plane, she had taken them out, poured over them, made sure she knew them so she wouldn’t put her foot in it and say something inappropriate when she found herself in the setting of the stories. She made sure she knew them because Fitz was her friend and he was showing her his home, showing her a little piece of his heart, and she didn’t want to be unworthy of it. She didn’t want to let him down.

Whatever Fitz had deigned to share with her she had made sure she knew intimately, but it had only been when he had told her about the door, when she had seen it with her own two eyes and met the woman behind it, that she had understood. Immediately and implicitly, she’d understood Fitz entirely, and she’d understood his mother, and for someone who’d struggled to understand people her whole life, that kind of immediate clarity had felt like being struck by lightning. Something that was unlikely to happen once to a person. Something that never happened twice.

It never has happened again, and it’s what Jemma thinks of now as she carefully parks on the opposite side of the road, neatly between a transit van and a twenty-year-old sports car. It’s something she’s never forgotten, that whole understanding of a person she had never met but somehow knew. The woman who taught Fitz how to cook for himself so that at sixteen he was more competent than those at the Academy almost ten years their senior. The woman who phoned every Sunday at 6pm and didn’t care for excuses. The woman who sent care packages with all their favourites, even with treats that Jemma loved and Fitz hated. The second she had opened the door and embraced her son, and then embraced Jemma equally in kind, Jemma had understood her, and had understood why, in the middle of the night, she had come out and painted her front door her favourite shade of blue.

Maggie Fitz sees her coming from the front window now, just as she had all those years ago, and by the time Jemma makes it to the blue front door she’s already standing with it open.

“Mrs Fitz,” Jemma begins, nervously smiling. It’s been years after all. The last time she spoke to her was on the phone nearly two months ago, and in trying to console her and promise her that they’d explain things soon, there hadn’t been much in the way of friendly conversation. Jemma has no idea if the woman who loved her so dearly back then still feels the same way now.

But she’s underestimated her, and just as soon as the _z_ has left her mouth, Maggie is reaching out and pulling her into a ferocious hug that has Jemma’s eyes smarting, not from the pain (although there certainly is some), but from the sheer aching familiarity of it, and how much she’s missed it.

“Don’t start with that ‘Mrs Fitz’, shite,” a voice says firmly into her ear. “It’s Maggie to you. It always has been.” And she pulls back to get a good look at her, keeping a firm grip on her arms in case Jemma had any thought of disappearing. Looking her up and down, with tears in her eyes, she says, “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Jemma. It’s so so good to see you.”

Jemma tries to stop her bottom lip from wobbling. “It’s so good to see you too, Maggie. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart.” And she released her tight grip, stepping back. “It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

“A lifetime,” she says honestly, because it has been. There’s almost no part of her that’s the same as when she stepped in this house last.

Maggie laughs shortly. “It has that. Come on in, sweetheart. Get yourself settled. We were through in the kitchen.”

Jemma follows Maggie through the house. It’s just as she remembered it, and though she has no right to be, she finds herself so very glad. “Were?”

Maggie nods as they go into the kitchen. “Leo’s taken the wee one out for a walk to burn off her energy. She was getting a bit high while we were blethering. Not that I can blame her, mind you. You know what I can be like, Jemma, I’d talk the fucking hind legs off a donkey.”

Jemma remembers quite well. Maggie Fitz could talk for Scotland. She always has something to say. Fitz used to get so embarrassed about it, begging her to be quiet, apologising to Jemma with his eyes when she wouldn’t. Jemma’s never minded. Maggie’s brutally honest opinions and outlook on the world were refreshing, something she’d never experienced with her family at all.

Then, seeing the look that must be on Jemma’s face, she laughs and says, “Don’t worry, I remembered to watch my mouth around the wee one.”

Jemma nods, relieved, though she suspects Maggie watching her mouth is more the result of Fitz reminding her to than any spontaneous effort on her part. Never in her whole acquaintance with the woman has she known her to remember to mind her language – an infamous example being the time they all went for dinner with Jemma’s parents and the waiter had been exceptionally rude, prompting Maggie Fitz to pronounce him a ‘fucking arsehole’ to the rest of the table.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jemma says lightly, although sure that her toddler will have just miraculously learnt some new words by the end of the day.

Maggie holds out a cup to her. “You wanting tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“Your usual way?”

“If you remember it.”

“Of course I do,” Maggie scoffs, turning around to busy herself in the act of making it. “Though you couldn’t blame me if I didn’t. It’s been such a long time.”

“It has,” Jemma says carefully, unaware of what’s already been said to Fitz on the subject. She knows that he’ll receive the brunt of Maggie’s displeasure, of her justifiable anger at having been kept in the dark, but she also knows that she’ll probably be in for it too, at some point. Part the parcel of being accepted as one of Maggie’s own – losing immunity to her emotions.

“I’ve got to apologise to you,” Maggie sighs, catching Jemma off guard immediately. She doesn’t turn around, still busying herself with teabags and milk. “The way I spoke to you last wasn’t right. I said some things that I shouldn’t’ve, things that were bang out of order actually.”

Jemma doesn’t say anything and lets her continue, sensing she isn’t quite finished.

“I was shocked, angry, whatever you want to call it, but it’s no excuse. I shouldn’t’ve spoke to you the way I did - God knows I’d throttle anyone that spoke to me like that.” She sighs. “I should’ve done it long before now but it’s one of those things, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m sorry about it, sweetheart, I really am. It wasn’t anything to do with you.”

Jemma thinks back to the last time she’d spoken with Fitz’s mother, the phone call that had come after the letters they had sent. Maggie had been downright inconsolable, flitting between outrage and upset, and Fitz had been completely at a loss with what to say, handing to the phone to Jemma with wild eyes and a panicked expression. It had taken an hour, maybe more, to eventually calm Maggie down and promise her they’d be down with Alya to see her soon. Jemma remembers her demanding answers, lamenting lost time, but she doesn’t remember her as being particularly unkind, as saying anything that wounded and left a mark. She is apologising for nothing, and in this case, Jemma thinks, she is remarkably like her son.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Jemma says gently, waiting for her to turn around with two cups in hand. “It was a… difficult time, for all of us. You were perfectly entitled to your feelings.”

“I shouldn’t have taken them out on you.” Maggie fixes her with a stern look, sitting down at the table opposite from her. “That was wrong of me.”

“It’s understandable, and besides, I think Fitz would have been more concerned if you hadn’t reacted the way you did.”

“Aye,” Maggie laughs, taking a sip of a drink that must be far too hot. “Right enough. I do have a bit of a habit of making a fuss. It was just…” she heaves a sigh, “Och, I was just so scared.”

She takes another sip and then wrinkles up her nose. “Far too hot.” Getting up from the table she goes to the sink and puts a splash of cold water in her mug, but she doesn’t come and sit back down. Instead she stands at the sink and looks out the window above it, staring out into the garden at something Jemma doesn’t think is there. How often has she found herself doing that since they returned from space and settled into their Perth house? How often has she found herself staring into the garden but really staring into the past, wondering how everything they have ever done could have led them here?

Jemma says nothing, waiting for her to speak. She senses there’s a great deal Maggie needs to say and, if given enough time, then she will.

“I just felt so cheated,” Maggie says at last, still looking out of the window. “All those women at work or at church or at the shops… all those women talking about the times they were having with their kids, their grandkids. Dinners and holidays and days out and I – well I wasn’t having any of that, was I? I didn’t hear anything from my boy at all. Not a bloody thing for three whole years. I knew that I wouldn’t hear from him all the time but still, three _years._ ”

There’s a pain in Jemma’s chest at the reminder of how long it has been for their families, occurring simultaneously with a pain at the memory that, in truth, it’s been so much longer. She yearns to explain it to Maggie, to explain that she’s the lucky one, really, having only to miss them for three years, and not the seven it’s closer to being, but she can’t, because it’s not the truth. As hard as those seven years have been, she wouldn’t risk altering them in any way for fear it changes her family now.

“There was just nothing. I was sick to my stomach, Jemma.” Maggie grips the edge of the sink so hard until her fingers turn white. “I’d have known if he was dead,” she whispers. “I would have known that, I would’ve _felt_ that, but not being dead, well that’s not necessarily anything good is it? Doesn’t prove anything. I still didn’t have anything.”

“And then one day I get a letter, like nothing’s ever happened. A letter like I hadn’t spent the past three years worried to death over him. Over you. And God, I was just so bloody angry. Angry at him, angry at the time I’d missed, the things I’d missed. Angry that I’d been so worried for so long and he’d let me. Angry that it had been three fucking years and I couldn’t get any of that time back.”

“Maggie,” Jemma breathes, feeling the tell-tale sting of tears in her eyes. “We _never_ meant to… we were only trying…”

She turns around, and her face isn’t angry but instead soft and open, familiar. “Oh I know, sweetheart, I know.” She sits back down, immediately taking Jemma’s hand in her own. “Leo explained it all, or tried to, anyway, and I know. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just trying to make you understand, I suppose, why I was the way I was with you.”

Jemma’s always understood, but she can’t tell her that, can’t tell her that she’s always understood her because Maggie wouldn’t be able to understand that. Instead, she goes for something that she can.

“I do,” she nods, trying and moderately succeeding in stopping her tears from falling. “I do understand it, and I just want to say that I’m sorry.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart,” Maggie softly protests. “It’s on me.”

“No,” Jemma shakes her head. “Not for that. For the way we came back into your life, for the way we handled it, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about how much we hurt you in staying away, in keeping ourselves cut off. I’m sorry for your feelings, Maggie, but I’m not sorry about why we did it. I’m not sorry for doing it.” She lets go of Maggie’s hand and puts them around her hot mug, the heat giving her strength. “It kept our family safe and it’s allowed us to be here today. I can’t be sorry for that.”

She’s not afraid of what Maggie’s reaction will be, not exactly, but she’s hesitant to look into her face. When she can brave it, she’s somehow unsurprised to find her smiling in that all-knowing way of hers.

“You know,” she says, tapping the table. “I’ve always wondered if you and Leo were close because you were alike, or you were alike because you were so close.” She shakes her head, amused. “I don’t want you to be sorry. Doing right by our family, well it’s all any of us want to do.”

Her eyes cloud over a little bit and Jemma can tell instantly she’s back in the past. She has the same haunted look as her son.

“I’ve always wondered if I’ve done right by him,” she says, and there’s no doubt as to who _him_ is. “With everything that happened here when he was a boy.”

“I think you did the best you could,” Jemma offers tentatively. “It was a very tense situation.”

“Aye,” she snorts, “you could say that.” Maggie shakes her head. “Oh, there were so many times I wanted to strangle the bastard, so many times I got close to do doing just that. There were so many times I thought about packing a bag and just leaving with Leo, never coming back.”

“Why didn’t you?” She asks, curiously but without accusation. It’s unlike Maggie to be so insecure about the past, about things that cannot be changed.

Maggie raises her eyes to the ceiling. “We’d never have made it anywhere far. We had no money – Alistair drank it away like was water – and Leo had school and, in the end, I thought it would’ve done him more harm than good.” She looks back to Jemma. “I was twenty when I was married, twenty-one when I had Leo. I didn’t know anything about anything then. Here we had a roof over our heads and food on the table and at the time, those things seemed more important.”

“He doesn’t blame you for it, Maggie,” Jemma says quietly. “He never could. He thinks you’re the most amazing mother he could have ever had.”

“As he should,” Maggie says reflexively, something she would say if Fitz were here, if this were a time for laughing and joking and deep insecurities and fears of the past hadn’t just come spilling out. For a moment she smiles, but then it’s gone, and she’s staring soberly into her tea once again.

“He’s it for me,” she says quietly, looking into her cup as if it will give her the answers. “I never had the career or the friends or the husband,” she laughs sadly. “The rest of the world could go hang as far as I was concerned. And as long as he was alright then I was alright – I never cared about anyone else.”

She looks at Jemma, almost abashed but not quite, and Jemma knows that this is something she’s not sorry for either.

“In a way it’s still like that. I love you, sweetheart, and I love that precious wee granddaughter of mine but-”

She breaks off, but Jemma doesn’t need her to finish. Maggie has always loved her like she’s one of her own. Like, but not quite, and she understands this also. There’s nobody in the world Jemma loves more than her child, either.

“He’s your son, Maggie,” Jemma says softly. “He’s your everything.”

“Aye,” Maggie agrees, voice almost a whisper. It’s the quietest Jemma’s ever known her. “He is that.”

For it’s not the same as it is between Jemma and her parents. Before Jemma they had each other, and with her gone it is just the same. She is an addition to their duo, something that can be subtracted. They love her, she knows they do, but they were fully complete without her once, and they would have been able to be again. Fitz completes Maggie, is her reason for being, and she lives for him in a way that Jemma’s parents could never for her.

“Don’t tell him any of this,” Maggie suddenly says, the small, haunted look disappearing from her face. “I don’t want him to worry. These aren’t things he needs to be fussing about.”

Jemma chews at her bottom lip for a moment, uncomfortable with the position she’s in. Eventually, though, she decides she has to be honest. She and Maggie are a lot alike once more - Fitz is who they both prioritise over the other.

“We don’t keep secrets from each other anymore,” she says evenly, knowing she won’t be moved on this. “But I won’t tell him unless he asks.” And then, softer, “I don’t want to worry him, either.”

Maggie’s face changes, and in a moment, she becomes the Maggie that Jemma knows, has known since she was eighteen years old. The woman that stayed up at night with a library book about constellations because her six-year-old wanted to know about stars. The woman that kept the surname of her ex-husband all of these years so as to have the same name as her son. The woman that worked two jobs and still managed to make all of the parents’ evenings and performances and interview days like it was nothing. The woman that painted her front door blue.

She smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him,” she says. “I hope he knows that.”

Jemma laughs, too. “I don’t think that’s strictly true anymore. Alya will always have me beaten.”

“Maybe,” she allows, “but he wouldn’t have her without you. I wouldn’t have _him_ without you either, I suspect.” She tilts her head. “I know you didn’t do it for me, but thank you anyway.”

Jemma blinks at her, unable to form any kind of reply. What can she say? Who did she do it all for? Who was she thinking of all those times when they were ripped away from each other once again and she travelled through space and time to reunite them all once more? Who was Fitz thinking of when he did the same? In all honesty, though she can remember the longing, the pull of her heart as it strained towards him only to never find him, she can’t remember who exactly she was doing it for. It never seemed to be for him, never seemed to be for her. _Us,_ is all she can think of. _I did it all for us._

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Fitz,” she says quietly, remembering all those past lives they inhabited, lives which now seem so very far away. “We saved each other.”

“Well I’m glad you did,” Maggie says with finality. “I really am glad to have you both back and safe and sound, _and_ with a darling granddaughter for me to spoil.” She takes Jemma’s hand in her own again, squeezes very tightly. “I love you, Jemma, and no less than I ever did before.”

 _No less than I ever did before._ “I love you,” Jemma tells her sincerely, willing herself not to cry. “Thank you, Maggie.”

“Always, sweetheart.” And she squeezes once more before letting go at the sound of the front door which has banged open.

“We’re back!” Fitz shouts from the front hallway, and Jemma quickly swipes under her eyes, having just enough time to steel herself before a blonde bullet shoots into the room, nothing more than a blur.

“Mama!” It cries, barrelling straight into Jemma’s legs as she stands up. “You’re here!”

“Of course I am, my sweet girl,” Jemma says as she hoists Alya onto her hip. “Where else would I be?”

“You’re here,” Fitz repeats, walking into the kitchen, his face adorably flushed. He points at Alya, frowning. “I thought I told you to wait for me.”

“Mama’s here,” she says, leaning into Jemma’s neck.

“I can see that,” Fitz says pointedly, “but you can’t run off like that.”

“But Mama?”

“But nothing,” Jemma replies for Fitz, looking Alya in the eye. “You should never run away from Daddy. Especially not in a busy street.”

“ _Fine,_ ” Alya huffs, ever the little drama queen. She turns from her mother to her father, making little effort to appear contrite. “Sorry, Daddy.”

“That’s alright,” he sighs, passing a hand over his head. “Just don’t do it again.”

Maggie laughs. “She’s just like you,” she says to her son.

Fitz looks affronted. “I was never this impossible.”

“Och, you so were,” Maggie scoffs. “A right pain in the arse.”

“ _Mum,”_ Fitz hisses, looking nervously for a split second at Jemma, who has to bite the inside of her cheek not to laugh. “Will you watch it, _please_?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Maggie holds up her hands. “A slip of the tongue, I swear. Don’t listen to Granny, Alya. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

Fitz groans into his palms and Jemma can’t help but laugh, which she does a poor job of disguising with a cough. She puts Alya down, though her hand remains on the back of her head.

“What did the two of you get up to on your walk then?”

“Ice-cream!”

“Ice cream?” Jemma raises an eyebrow at Fitz, though the evidence of such an endeavour is all over Alya’s face. “I thought the purpose was to burn off the energy she’d amassed, not fuel her more?”

“Yeah,” Fitz says, scratching the back of his neck. “Um, that _was_ the plan but then she saw the ice-cream van and you know how fascinated she is with them and she just _had t_ o have one and-” he laughs a little nervously, and Jemma thinks it’s one of the most adorable things she’s ever seen. “Well you know what she’s like, impossible to say no to.”

She is rather impossible to say no to, but Jemma would never admit it. While she’s not as quick as Fitz to relent, she still does find it hard to deny their daughter anything, particularly when it’s something she’s been denied by circumstance all these years. All Alya has to do is make her eyes wide or smile with her monkey grin and Jemma is just as caught as Fitz, wrapped tightly around their daughter’s little finger.

“I think you’re the impossible one,” Jemma sighs, but she smiles, really meaning _it would be impossible for me to stay angry at you. It would be impossible for me not to love you._

Maggie looks between the two of them knowingly. “Come on, sweetheart,” she says to Alya. “There’s something in the garden I want to show you.”

Alya looks to Jemma questioningly with her thumb in her mouth. “It’s alright, sweet girl,” she says encouragingly. “Off you go with Granny. Daddy and I will be outside in a minute.”

The something is a new swing set that Maggie had gone and bought as soon as she learned of their planned visit. _I wanted her to have something at mine,_ she’d said last night on the phone. _You’ll have to check it’s all set up right before she goes on it but it should be fine. You don’t mind, do you?_ And then, once Fitz had assured her they didn’t mind at all, there had been a much quieter, _do you think she’ll like it?_

Maggie is loud and sure. She’s one of the fiercest women that Jemma has ever met, and she’s met a lot of fierce women in her extraordinary life. She’s been a mother for over thirty-two years (that she knows of) but yet she’d still been afraid. Afraid of getting it wrong, afraid of not being exactly right. Jemma thinks of it, of herself, of all mothers, and understands exactly once again. A bolt of lightning. Maybe it does strike twice.

“What’s that look on your face?” Fitz asks, coming around to her side.

“I don’t have anything on my face,” she retorts, reaching up to swipe at the remains of a chocolate ice-cream cone at the corner of his mouth with her thumb. She shows it to him. “Unlike you.”

“Oops.” He grins, looking very much like his daughter. “Is that it?”

“Not quite,” Jemma hums, and reaches upwards to kiss the spot, before moving down and finding his mouth. He tastes like chocolate and sunshine, and a whole lot of love. “There,” she says against his lips when she’s done. “That’s it now.”

Fitz smiles against her mouth. “My mum’s right outside, you know.”

“Somehow I doubt she would mind,” Jemma whispers, looking up at Fitz. He looks a little bit dazed, dreamy, and while she’d like to attribute it all to her kissing talents, she knows the chocolate ice-cream probably has something to do with it, too. His eyes are sparkling, brilliantly blue, and her breath catches in her throat.

“You’ve got that look on your face again.” His voice is low and breathy. “What is it?”

She tilts her head slightly. “Your eyes… they’re the same colour as your mum’s front door.”

He pulls back just a little, forehead creasing. Half amused and half confused he asks, “What are you on about?”

A soft smile, a shake of the head. A whole lot of love. “Nothing at all,” she murmurs, leaning upwards to kiss him once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day and are managing to stay safe and well in this crazy world! I hope your 2021 has gotten off to as good a start as it could have <3


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